hat other river whose every wave is
a human soul flowing to eternity as the river below flows to the
ocean,--lying there moored unseen, in loneliness so profound that
the columns of Tadmor in the Desert could not seem more remote from
life,--the cool breeze on one's forehead, the stream whispering against
the half-sunken pillars,--why should I tell of these things, that I
should live to see my beloved haunts invaded and the waves blackened
with boats as with a swarm of water-beetles? What a city of idiots
we must be not to have covered this glorious bay with gondolas and
wherries, as we have just learned to cover the ice in winter with
skaters!

I am satisfied that such a set of black-coated, stiff-jointed,
soft-muscled, paste-complexioned youth as we can boast in our Atlantic
cities never before sprang from loins of Anglo-Saxon lineage. Of the
females that are the mates of these males I do not here speak. I
preached my sermon from the lay-pulpit on this matter a good while
ago. Of course, if you heard it, you know my belief is that the total
climatic influences here are getting up a number of new patterns of
humanity, some of which are not an improvement on the old model.
Clipper-built, sharp in the bows, long in the spars, slender to look at,
and fast to go, the ship, which is the great organ of our national
life of relation, is but a reproduction of the typical form which the
elements impress upon its builder. All this we cannot help; but we can
make the best of these influences, such as they are. We have a few
good boatmen,--no good horsemen that I hear of,--nothing remarkable, I
believe, in cricketing,--and as for any great athletic feat performed
by a gentleman in these latitudes, society would drop a man who should
run round the Common in five minutes. Some of our amateur fencers,
single-stick players, and boxers, we have no reason to be ashamed of.
Boxing is rough play, but not too rough for a hearty young fellow.
Anything is better than this white-blooded degeneration to which we all
tend.

I dropped into a gentlemen's sparring exhibition only last evening. It
did my heart good to see that there were a few young and youngish youths
left who could take care of their own heads in case of emergency. It is
a fine sight, that of a gentleman resolving himself into the primitive
constituents of his humanity. Here is a delicate young man now, with an
intellectual countenance, a slight figure, a sub-pallid complexion,